PETRUS WILHELMI DE GRUDENCZ: Fifteenth-century music from central europe

Track 19: Psalteriis et tympanis (Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz)

The discovery of Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz – an unknown poet-composer of the Du Fay era – in the 1970s, can be considered one of the most remarkable achievements of musicology in today’s Eastern Europe (then behind the Iron Curtain).

Born in Pomerania in 1392, Petrus studied at the Cracow University. Later he became chaplain of Emperor Frederick III and worked mainly in Central Europe. His oeuvre is informed by the musical tradition of this large cultural space, which in the late Middle Ages included the entire Holy Roman Empire (with Bohemia) and the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. It combines the poetry of a late-medieval polymath with an archaic sounding musical material that assimilated the ars nova, on the one hand, and the compositional style of the local-popular and “retrospective” polyphony, on the other – without forgoing certain “contemporary” sounds.

As a creative personality, Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz was not an exceptional phenomenon in Central Europe. Therefore, his works are presented here alongside those by his named and anonymous contemporaries. This recording honours with a portrait the musical culture from which they all emerged.